Housecash
A shared-house finance app that grew from an Excel sheet into a real-time expense tracking system used by my bachelor house for around two years.
Housecash started in 2022 as an expense sheet for a four-person bachelor house.
The sheet worked, but it made me the person responsible for every update and settlement.
The app turned that manual system into a shared workflow everyone could use directly.
From spreadsheet to product
The Excel system
A detailed sheet tracked expenses, shares, paid states, and totals.
The spreadsheet moved the problem to me
The tracking worked, but direct settlement was the real problem to solve.
From our house to multiple houses
The first app expanded the workflow from one house to multiple shared groups.
Integrated full-stack app
The rebuild added auth, house management, history, and realtime updates.
Before the app
The money sheet
Tracked each expense and share, but depended on one maintainer.
The totals sheet
Showed what everyone owed or should receive.
Current app screenshot
The main Housecash interface rebuilt as a full-stack app.
Problem
Shared expenses were easy to forget, and one person ended up managing every balance manually.
What I Built
Built a real-time app for houses, expenses, balances, history, and cash confirmations.
Outcome
Used as a real house workflow for around two years.
Product decisions
Cash-only payments
Matched how the house actually paid: cash between members.
Confirmation instead of payment processing
The payer marks paid, the receiver confirms, and everyone sees the update.
Free infrastructure tradeoff
Free hosting kept it practical, but backups became the main tradeoff.
What I learned
The spreadsheet was the prototype. The product came from seeing where the manual workflow broke.
Overview
Housecash turned a bachelor-house expense spreadsheet into a direct settlement app for shared living.
Key Highlights
- ✦Started as a 2022 Excel sheet
- ✦Removed the payment middleman
- ✦Realtime cash confirmations with Ably
- ✦Auth, houses, balances, and history